Daring Cooks: Pierogies!

I was very excited to find out that the Daring Cooks challenge for August was going to be Pierogies. I love these little bundles of yumminess. Then summer happened and I forgot all about it! Luckily, when I started getting the posts and recipes of some of my fellow Daring Cooks in my RSS feeds, I jumped on board and made me a batch!

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

Well, my locale for the filling was whatever I had in my refrigerator. I had leftover rosemary-lemon chicken and some mashed potatoes. I decided to also mix in some mushrooms, sautéed in butter, white wine and rosemary. Mix it all together, and my pierogi filling was ready!

I followed the basic Russian pierogi dough recipe suggested by our hostesses and used a handy tea glass that was just the right size: 2-inches. I resisted the temptation to buy me those cute pierogi molds because a glass and a fork did the job. But, I found that when I boiled my pierogies, they would stick to the bottom of my non-stick pan. Grrr…. So, my shallow bath of salted boiling water was possibly too shallow. Better luck next time, I say! You can also pan fry the pierogies after you boil them for more flavor and crunch.